Friday, 8 June 2012

Interview – Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

It's no secret that I love Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros – I've even blogged about them a couple of times before. So when the lovely guys at The 405 asked if I would like to have a chat with lead singer Alex Ebert I jumped at the chance:

Before you guys were Up from Below and now
you’re Here – does that mean Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros have
arrived?

You’ve put it together, right? You’re the
first one! I mean that’s exactly how I describe it – the first album was
reaching towards something and this album is sort of speaking from somewhere.
The first album is moving towards someplace it wants to be and it’s sort of
chaotic in that sense, it’s sort of desperate. But this album is speaking from
a place that’s arrived and yeah…you’re exactly right.

How do you even make an album – there’s so
many of you? There was a nice video going round of you all in the studio making
some amazing sounds.

Well yeah, that’s basically how some of it
happens. I think writing is still very often a very intimate experience but
sometimes it happens on a group level and all at once. The thing that we really
all did together consistently was work out arrangements and put the time in and
be present to play our instruments over and over again and work out what was
what and what goes where. That’s something that we didn’t really do on the
first album – the first album was all like demo’d up before we recorded it so…

So there is kind of a more relaxed feel to
this album maybe?

Yeah it’s a bit more relaxed and I gotta
keep reminding people that it’s one part of a double album and the second part
is coming out in November. And the second part is definitely a lot more
rambunctious! It’s not necessarily that the end of this chapter has been
reached and that’s where we stand, but this album is just part of what we
wanted to express and it’s where we’re coming from right now.

And what’s the message you’re trying to
spread with this first half of the double album?

I think to me, it’s defiance. That is the
biggest theme to me, and that sort of commitment to joy and transcendence –
even in the face of realism or pessimism and all that kind of thing. We get
called a very joyful, celebratory band and I think that’s true but I don’t
think we ignore, or that there would be any benefit of trying to ignore, all of
the sort of more painful sides of life, we just like to be about transcending
that stuff into something else.

Audiences really connected with the last
album and loved those songs, what’s the reaction been to the new tracks when
you’ve played them live?

Oh it’s amazing! Man On Fire is amazing
live and we’re starting to play that really well and that’s been amazing. Child
is amazing and Fiya Wata – we’ve been playing that for a long time, but Man On
Fire has become this very frothy experience where everyone just starts going
bananas and it’s really wild. It’s so fun… so fun.

You’re getting bigger and bigger though,
have you lost some of ability to connect with audiences now you’re playing to
bigger audiences?

No, we’re playing bigger venues and the
thing is that it gets stranger and stranger that we’re not changing and making
it a suddenly “professional show”. The juxtaposition gets greater and greater
between who we are and what the venue assumes you’re supposed to be. But
realising that I felt that pressure on myself just by being in these venues and
what these venues sort of expect from you as structures – they sort of ask you
to be regal and sort of a bit more highfalutin – and rebelling intentionally
against that has been a really interesting experiencing. We sort of just break
down those walls and fly into the audience, and hang out, and do our thing, without
a setlist and all that – it’s pretty wild. And I think for some people, to be
in one of those larger venues, and for it to still feel somewhat chaotic is a
pretty jarring but hopefully liberating experience.

You played a very theatrical show at the Old
Vic Tunnels in London last year. Any plans for more of that?

You know, a lot of effort goes into that
kind of thing and a lot of people and a lot of time. We would love to something
like that again but I think the closest we will come to that is when we come to
play at Latitude Festival. But other than that we’re mostly just going to bring
our bodies not bring a whole giant show. But what we might try and do is to
involve local artists and local people who want to participate in something and
wrap our heads around something. But for the most part, right now, we’re just
concentrating on playing shows and making the music.

About Me

I got my first taste of writing when I spent ten weeks as a reporter and photographer on Central American newspaper Honduras This Week. It was not exactly a conventional gap year! Having contributed to national newspapers and magazines, BBC news, and a variety of arts and culture blogs I can now be found working as a writer and editor at a fantastic creative agency in London.
IWAOS will continue to be a place where I publish my sensible and not-so-sensible writings....I hope you like it.